About the Book
The period in Europe known as the Belle Epoque was a time of vibrant and unsettling modernization in social and political organization, in artistic and literary life, and in the conduct and discoveries of the sciences. These trends, and the emphasis on internationalization that characterized them, necessitated the development of new structures and processes for discovering, disseminating, manipulating and managing access to information.
This book analyses the dynamics of the emerging networks of individuals, organizations, technologies and publications by which means information was exchanged across and through all kinds of borders and boundaries in this period. It extends the frame within which historical discourse about information can take place by bringing together scholars not only from different disciplines but also from different national and linguistic backgrounds. As a result the volume offers new and surprising ways of looking at the historical period of the Belle Epoque. It will be of interest to scholars and students of information history and the emergence of the information society as well as to social and cultural historians concerned with the late 19th and early 20th century.
Table of Contents:
Contents: Introduction: international exhibitions, Paul Otlet, Henri La Fontaine and the paradox of the belle époque, W. Boyd Rayward; Of artifacts and organs: world telegraph cables and Ernst Kapp’s philosophy of technology, Frank Hartmann; The formation of global news agencies, 1859-1914, Volker Barth; `In the pursuit of colonial intelligence’: the archive and identity in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, Heather Gaunt; Divided space - divided science? Closing and transcending scientific boundaries in Central Europe between 1860 and 1900, Jan Surman; Scholarly networks and international congresses: the Orientalists before the First World War, Paul Servais; Organizing a global idiom: Esperanto, Ido and the World Auxiliary Language Movement before the First World War, Markus Krajewski; Beyond Babel: Esperanto, Ido and Louis Couturat’s pursuit of an international scientific language, Fabian de Kloe; Laboratories of social thought: the transnational advocacy network of the Institut International pour la Diffusion des Expériences Sociales and its Documents du Progrès (1907-1916), Christophe Verbruggen and Julie Carlier; Sociology in Brussels, organicism and the idea of a world society in the period before the First World War, Wouter Van Acker; Collecting paper: Die Brücke, the bourgeois interior, and the architecture of knowledge, Nader Vossoughian; Alfred H. Fried and the challenges for `scientific pacifism’ in the belle époque, Daniel Laqua; Global government through science: Pieter Eijkman’s plans for a world capital, Geert J. Somsen; Dynamics of networks and of decimal classification systems, 1905-35, Charles van den Heuvel; The great classification battle of 1910: a tale of `blunders and bizzareries’ at the Melbourne public library, Mary Carroll and Sue Reynolds; From display to data: the commercial museum and the beginnings of business information, 1870-1914, Dave Muddiman; An information management tool for dismantling barriers in early multinational corporations: the staff magazine in Britain before World War I, Alistair Black; Index.
About the Author :
W. Boyd Rayward is Emeritus Professor at the Universities of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia and Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. W. Boyd Rayward, Frank Hartmann, Volker Barth, Heather Gaunt, Jan Surman, Paul Servais, Markus Krajewski, Fabian de Kloe, Christophe Verbruggen, Julie Carlier, Wouter Van Acker, Nader Vossoughian, Daniel Laqua, Geert J. Somsen, Charles van den Heuvel, Mary Carroll, Sue Reynolds, Dave Muddiman, Alistair Black
Review :
'Historians are showing that the globalization of information is not a unique historical feature of the contemporary era, but a recurrent construction possessing many facets and unsuspected properties - including a longstanding utopian element. The contributors to this fine collection unearth a revealing series of cultural, intellectual, and technological projects to universalize information systems during the decades before World War I and, in the process, give us new ways of understanding the lineages of our own time.' Dan Schiller, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA 'There is so much in this book ... the complexity and range of ideas discussed here is remarkable, and it is all tremendously engaging.' Library and Information History 'Information Beyond Borders is an excellent example of intellectual information history at its finest. It offers a new lens through which to view a period of history already well studied, and shows us that the emergence of the modern information world was inexorably caught up with deeper historical forces, tensions, and aspirations.' Library and Information History
